WRITING ADVICE | NOVEMBER 15, 2021

How to (not) win friends

A writer friend of mine recently came to me with a dilemma. She was in the middle of finishing up the first draft of a memoir for her publisher and asked me, point-blank: "Are all of my friends going to disappear once this memoir is out in the public?" She mentioned that the main beef of the memoir focused on her (and I quote) "Bermuda Triangle Years"—a period of her life when she was involved in so many romantic relationships at the same time that she made the leading man in a television soap opera look like a slacker.

DEEP THOUGHTS | NOVEMBER 10, 2021

Internal dialogue... quotes or italics?

As we all know, internal dialogue refers to a character thinking the exact thoughts as written. But what's the best way to actually write internal dialogue out on the page? Should a writer use quotation marks or italics? Personally, I think all writers should use Wingdings. After all, can any of us really ever understand what's going on in our own heads? And can these thoughts really ever be translated onto paper?

WRITING ADVICE | NOVEMBER 6, 2021

How to eliminate distractions

For a writer, distractions can sometimes be difficult to manage For example, consider the iPhone. Not only does it act as a channel of communication for your chatty retired mother to take advantage of both day and night, but it also acts as a weird type of hypnosis device that just sits there on the edge of your desk doing nothing while simultaneously talking you into ordering 2 AM sushi delivery from That's How We Roll.